Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/36

28 or again the sober but finely executed productions of Emanuel Max, together with the richly decorative statues by other Prague sculptors as Jerome Kohl, Ulric Mayer and Boehm—all appear here in undisturbed and sober harmony. All this worth is, so to say, a visible sign of triumph and a memorial of the victory of antireformation, a memorial built up gradually in an artistic manner in the course of almost three centuries, and commanding admiration even from the adversaries of the antireformation movement. Before the XVIIth. century the ornaments of the bridge were few. There was a devotional pillar, two or three very insignificant statues, and a cross originally made of wood, but in 1648 replaced by a stone one, presented by Ferdinand III. and this is still standing.

It bears a Hebrew inscription put up at the cost of a Jew in 1696 as a punishment for mocking this croscross [sic]. The group was completed in 1836 by two side-statues being added representing the Mother of God and St. John the Evangelist both by E. Max.

In the middle of the bridge, between the statues of the Holy Trinity and of St. Norbertus is a small marble slab adorned by a brass cross and a nice baroque railing, marking the place, from where, according to the legend St. John of Pomuk, the father confessor of Wenceslaus IV. wife Queen Sophia, was hurled down into the river; and not far from this spot the bronze statue of St. John of worldwide renown stands above one of the bridge-pillars. From this point, the bridge takes a considerable downward gradient towards the (Malá Strana) Small Town.

Here we observe already the outline of the nearest houses of the Small town, low and, insignificant rising from the low bank of the river to the side-walls of the bridge. They are as it were the frame of a unique view which is formed by the two bridge towers at this end of the bridge with the splendid cupola of St. Nicolas’ church behind towering high above them. It is now worth while to turn round and cast a glance at the picture of the Old town behind, where there towers to the left of the bridge the greenish cupola of the Red Knights’ church rising high to the sky and where beyond it the two steeples of St. Salvator’s church with their six angular red-tiled balls